


all blind to god's design

by bellafarallones



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Not Shippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 21:36:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13579386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellafarallones/pseuds/bellafarallones
Summary: What if the agents of heaven and hell didn’t know it? Aziraphale and Crowley are both humans, or at least they think they are, and are drawn to each other by irrational, burning hatred.





	all blind to god's design

The sign above the door said AZIRAPHALE & SON, RARE BOOKS BOUGHT AND SOLD, but not much selling went on inside. This was Aziraphale’s heaven: smells of hot cocoa and dust, the stately silence of old books and his own soft breathing, and tall bookshelves chopping the sunlight into shadows as neatly as pages divided a story. The tinkle of the bell was an unwelcome interruption, and Aziraphale looked up from the book he was repairing, affronted.

“Sorry, I’m a little early,” said a young man with good cheekbones and dark hair slick with rain.

“Excuse me?”

“For the poetry slam. There’s a poster in the window?” There was indeed, “OPEN-MIC POETRY SLAM TONIGHT 5PM” scribbled on a piece of printer paper with black Sharpie. It was the most declaratory thing in the whole bookshop. The little cards that marked the contents of one aisle for another were written in soft pencil, as though they weren’t sure of their own message and definitely weren’t going to argue about it. 

“Are you hoping to perform? What’s your name?” Aziraphale considered getting up and trying to nudge him out the door, but decided against the effort. This guy would leave on his own soon enough when he realized nobody was going to listen to whatever poem about his ex-girlfriend he’d come hoping to perform.

“Crowley. And no, I was just going to listen.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale drummed his fingers on the dusty desk. “Well, unless someone else shows up, I doubt you’ll have much to listen to.”

“I’m sorry your turnout is bad.”

“It’s no trouble to me.”

“But your business…” he said as he took another step towards the desk.

“Online. Surely a young man like yourself knows that.” Aziraphale took a closer look, since the stranger didn’t seem to be going away. He was wearing black skinny jeans and a t shirt for a metal band with a pair of dark sunglasses hanging from the collar.

“Hey, you’re not ancient yourself. I assume you’re the son of Aziraphale & Son?”

“The grandson, actually, but my name’s Aziraphale too. Wreaked havoc in the attendance office. Are you new to the neighborhood?” The people who lived around there didn’t so much glance at the bookshop as they passed. Not since Aziraphale the first had died. Now it was just a warehouse for books that Aziraphale shipped off to libraries and universities on request, and it served so few foot customers that he didn’t even know how to work the cash register.

“Is it that obvious? I just moved into the student housing down the street.”

Usually Aziraphale had this strange compulsion towards charity, effusive goodness and kindness, and it was a damn inconvenience. It was partially why he locked himself up in the bookshop. If he could avoid people, he could avoid feeling profound, heart-wrenching pain at human suffering. This guy didn’t seem to trigger it, though. A burning desire to pin him to the ground and punch his face in meant he needed him to stick around. “Are you really a student if you’re going to  _ hear  _ open-mic slam poetry rather than trying to write it?” 

“Is it really a bookshop if you don’t sell books?”

“A bookhouse.”

“A book repository.”

They laughed, and fire crowded Crowley’s vision. He often dreamed of fire, four flaming rings rotating and interlocked to form a sphere, fire engulfing him. But this was different. Somehow this man  _ was  _ the fire, and something buried deep in Crowley’s reptilian brain, his snake brain, was telling him to fight back, telling him that this was a worthy opponent.

Crowley dismissed the thought. He’d learned from his stint in a mental institution as a teenager, staring out a bulletproof window and waiting for another psychiatrist to ask him why he’d been tripping his classmates as they walked by, spreading nasty rumors, and all the rest of it. 

Never tell your high school counselor that you feel like doing bad things. Never tell strangers, either. Better to go to juvie when you can’t resist what every fiber of your body is telling you to do than deal with the look on your mother’s face when she tells your guidance counselor that she feels irrationally guilty for the thoughts spilling from every crevice of your brain.

“Sit down?” said Aziraphale. “If you don’t have anything better to do.”

There was a chair on the other side of the counter, a relic of when Aziraphale’s workspace had become so messy that he’d been forced to move down a ways and restart his piles of books, and Crowley took it. Realizing they had nothing to talk about, they sat in silence for a few minutes.

“I feel like we should be in a fistfight,” said Aziraphale. “It’s nothing personal, but there’s just something about you.”

“Really? I feel the same way.”

Another few moments of silence. Crowley lowered his face into his hands. “Sometimes I feel like I’m possessed,” he confessed. 

Aziraphale breathed in. “So do I.”


End file.
